On April 12th, 1961 Yuri Gagarin launched into space on a Vostok rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, becoming the first person ever to leave the planet. Here’s the crazy thing: today’s astronauts travel to space on a nearly identical rocket, the Soyuz, which went into operation only five years after Gagarin’s historic flight. Why? While we’ve seen innovations in rockets over the last half-century, the underlying physics of how we get people and things into space has not changed. Chemical propulsion technology is still at the heart of all rockets. It’s what makes rocket science, rocket science. Getting to space… read more